Garrett
Kitchen
February
8, 2013
In California, Reading the Snow to Tell the Future for the Water SupplyCalifornia
Onishi, Norimitsu
nytimes.com
February 7th,
2013
US
This
month Frank Gehrke California’s chief snow
surveyor plunged a long silver tube into the snow to figure out the results of
the Sierra Nevada’s snowpack survey. “There’ve been only incremental changes…This
course is very uniform, which is normal, because the snowpack during
accumulation is kind of uniform. But once you start getting into the melt, it
starts to go crazy.” (Frank Gehrke). The results of the Snowpack survey
determine the water distribution to the districts in that area. The Sierra
Nevada survey is very important indicator of how much snowmelt water will be
supplied to the river that in turn supply water to the rivers that help the one
million acres of farmland in California (nytimes.com). A good stake of America’s
water supply comes from the Sierra Nevada snowmelt, so California has to edit its
water plans for the year depending on the outcome of the survey. “Fresno County
is the No. 1 agricultural county in the nation, but we also happen to be
situated climatically in the middle of a desert,” he said. It really is the
Sierra Nevada snowpack that makes this desert bloom.” (Ryan Jacobsen, executive
director of the Fresno County Farm Bureau)
At first I thought that viewing the Sierra Nevada
snowpack survey as the Groundhog Day was odd, but after studying how much affect
this snowmelt has on my state I understand. It is amazing to see how much our
society depends on the snow, something so taken for granted by everyday people.
It was interesting to learn that the Sierra Nevada, a fairly luscious place, is
actually a desert. In my opinion this article was slightly boring, but I
learned a lot of new information. The article was purely informational,
although every once in a while I think that a bias can make an article interesting.
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